Kouglo’s Shedding Freshly arrived in France after the Second World War, an African student from a large Parisian high school seduces and is also seduced by a pretty widow much older than him; it is love at first sight. This is the one of the main subjects of Kouglo's Shedding, the first novel by the young Dahomeyan (Beninois) writer Olympe Bhêly-Quenum, written in 1950-1951, but only published in 2003 by Éditions Phœnix Afrique, a publishing house founded by the author. In Kouglo's Shedding, the young author dissects French society in the postwar years immediately following WWII, starting with the Paris of Saint Germain- des- Prés, when Sartrean existentialism was in vogue. Kouglo is a young high school student who discovers Paris, indeed France itself, as well as other European countries: Italy, Greece, England, never forgetting Africa when he returns to explore his native land. A unique case in African literary creation: "The heroine's" road map of various facts, " at the heart of the book, reveals aspects of the socio-political and cultural climate of Paris during World War II, while one also reads about the positions of people such asthe philosopher Simone Weil, resistance fighters in the Vercors, etc.